Description
This essay is about how the Victorians defined Romanticism and how this affected the way that Romantic literature was viewed in the late nineteenth century. It reassesses the immediate cultural and literary legacy of Romantic writers in the late nineteenth century, showing how their writings were instrumental in shaping Romanticism as a cultural phenomenon.
In tracing those deliberate and accidental Romantic echoes that reverberate through the Victorian age into the beginning of the twentieth century, this collection acknowledges that the Victorians decided for themselves how to define what is 'Romantic'. The essays explore the extent to which Victorianism can be distinguished from its Romantic precursors, or whether it is possible to conceive of Romanticism without the influence of these Victorian definitions. "Romantic Echoes in the Victorian Era" reassesses Romantic literature's immediate cultural and literary legacy in the late nineteenth century, showing how the Victorian writings of Matthew Arnold, Wilkie Collins, the Brontes, the Brownings, Elizabeth Gaskell, Charles Dickens, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Thomas Hardy, and the Rossettis were instrumental in shaping Romanticism as a cultural phenomenon.Many of these Victorian writers found in the biographical, literary, and historical models of Chatterton, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats, and Wordsworth touchstones for reappraising their own creative potential and artistic identity. Whether the Victorians affirmed or revolted against the Romanticism of their early years, their attitudes towards Romantic values enriched and intensified the personal, creative, and social dilemmas described in their art. Taken together, the essays in this collection reflect on current critical dialogues about literary periodisation and contribute to our understanding of how these contemporary debates stem from Romanticism's inception in the Victorian age.
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